Jack Ludlow - The Gods of War

His next success was to turn a natural fortress blessed by terrain — high bluffs, natural escarpments, a fertile plateau and a constant supply of water — a place in which the added walls had once been allowed to fall into a near-ruin, into the most daunting stronghold in the whole Iberian Peninsula. Numantia provided security in a troubled land, so the itinerant had flocked to the place, turning it from a hill fort into a bustling town; it had become not only a place to defend, but a base from which to attack Rome. Year on year Brennos was getting stronger, with more men to do his bidding and fewer neighbours able to stand against his wishes. When the chieftains tried, Brennos suborned their younger warriors, holding out his vision, encouraging them to attack the Roman coastal provinces, his aim to keep the border alight.

His own devious nature allowed Servius to see clearly the temptations the man offered, the most obvious conclusion being that patience, as a policy, might prove unworkable. Brennos was clever, a man who dangled opportunity before greedy Roman eyes, the enticing prospect of a victory large enough to earn the winner a triumph to match any that had gone before. His hill fort, Numantia, might be near-impregnable, but there were others less formidable, and therefore more tempting — Pallentia, halfway to Numantia between the coastal plain and the deep interior, being one such. Brennos let it be known that an attack on that hill fort would draw him to its defence, creating the prospect that, out in the open, he could be defeated by superior Roman discipline. There was an obvious flaw to this dream of glory; it might be Brennos who won, which would leave the whole of Spain at his mercy. What could he achieve then?

Not prepared to risk defeat, possible death, and at the very least certain disgrace, Servius Caepio had come round to Lucius’s view that, other methods failing, Brennos should be assassinated, preferably by someone who could not command the succession. This would lead to the break-up of the confederation of tribes Brennos already dominated, and that in turn would get them back to warring with each other rather than Rome, bringing peace to the border. Let them fight for their mountains and valleys as much as they liked.

One of the assets vital to a good intriguer is the ability to listen, because only by doing this can he find his opponent’s weakness. Servius listened to the centurions who had been stationed in Spain for years, just as he did to those Celts who sought protection and peace with Rome. The governor was patient with these client chieftains, garnering nuggets of information from the midst of their endemic Celtic boasting, but most of all he courted the Greeks, who, being in trade, of necessity needed to take a long view. The two who sat with him now had plenty to relate.

As a race, the Romans had a sharp and immediate sense of their own history; to them, Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who had annihilated two Roman armies and ravaged the whole of Italy, was no distant memory, he was yesterday. The sack of Rome by the Celtic tribes, under another Brennos, over two hundred years before Hannibal’s invasion, seemed like last week. The Greeks’ protectors knew this, and took some delight in ensuring that the threat Brennos represented seemed real.

Servius Caepio heard, behind their doom-laden words, the hint of the greed he sought. He needed the knowledge of these men who passed regularly back and forth between Emphorae and Numantia, men who could provide a picture of life in the fortress; who could detail the habits and hopes of those with some prominence, warriors perhaps, who at present stood in the shadow of Brennos. But they would not speak for nothing, while he was reluctant to offer an outright bribe, because for gold they might tell him what he wanted to hear. He needed to tempt them to speak, and if possible to do so without paying them so much as a copper ass.

‘No Roman could go near Numantia and hope to keep his head,’ he said, ‘yet we desire an end to this constant upheaval so I must find a way of approaching Brennos. If I can open up a dialogue, who knows what may flow from it.’

‘Peace,’ replied one of the Greeks, sententiously, ‘and from the blessings of that flows prosperity.’

Servius looked him straight in the eye. ‘Those who achieved such a thing could command their own reward.’

‘As you say, Excellency, not a Roman, yet neither, I fear, could the task be entrusted to a Celt.’

‘Brennos is suspicious of his own race,’ said the second Greek trader. ‘A man with such power must be suspicious of everybody.’

‘Naturally.’

At this acknowledgement the two traders brightened; Brennos had treated them well and they had good reason to feel they would be welcome in Numantia again, and said so. Without a blush they put themselves forward as envoys, not forgetting to add that they lacked the funds to make such a journey, in pursuit of such a mission, on their own.

‘No envoy of mine could travel in a fashion that demeans the Republic,’ said Servius expansively, his heart warming at the glow of avarice this produced. ‘Yet I wonder if it’s money well spent. Everything you’ve told me makes me doubt he would welcome my overtures.’ The result of this douche of cold water and reality nearly produced a laugh, so dramatically did the two faces fall; he had allowed them to glimpse considerable wealth then smartly withdrawn it. ‘What troubles me is this: that through no fault of anyone, words will be used that will kill off any hope of dialogue before it can be started.’

‘Truly it requires skill, Excellency.’

‘It also requires knowledge. Perhaps there are others in Numantia, people whom you could approach initially, who hold the key to his thinking. People close to Brennos who could perhaps persuade him to listen.’

They talked eagerly, unaware that in seeking to impress this Roman consul they had missed his true purpose. Servius knew well that, in any situation where power exists, there would always be someone who wished to usurp it and the first act of such people is to talk to others, hinting at those small areas where they disagree with their leader. By the time he dismissed them he had the names of at least ten warriors, some members of Brennos’s own bodyguard, others cousins to his wife, who fitted that category. One of them might be prepared to betray him for the chance to enhance his own prospects of ruling the Duncani.

Not inclined to entrust all his eggs to one basket, Servius read avidly, absorbing the mass of intelligence already gathered, going all the way back to Aulus’s old despatches and the more recent reports of Titus Cornelius. He knew more of Brennos than any living Roman, so the man, from being a mere name, began to take on a proper shape. Running like a thread though marble was his obsession with the destruction of the Roman Empire, no doubt to be replaced with a Celtic one with him at the head, and physically he seemed to have the stature for such an ambition.

Brennos had, it seemed, aged well these last seventeen years. He stood head and shoulders above most of his fellow Celts, his hair, worn long, was now silver, with the odd hint of gold at the very tips. For all his power and prestige he dressed simply; the outward trappings of his elevated status meant nothing to him, though no report failed to mention his one piece of decoration, a gold talisman he wore at his neck, shaped like an eagle in flight. Many addressed him as if he were a king and there was much to underscore that assumption, not least the size of his family. Too powerful to be constrained by convention, he had taken several concubines, while still acknowledging Cara as his wife. Given his own potency, and that of his women, his immediate family had increased, till he numbered twenty-six in his own household. To an outside observer he could scarcely ask for more, but it appeared that anyone who got remotely close to Brennos soon found him to be a deeply frustrated man. The grip of his obsession had grown, not diminished, with both time and success, till the very name ‘Rome’ was, apparently, enough to throw him into a towering rage.